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Mr. Sipple, and everyone reading this who was riled up by his response in this section of letters to the editor: There are a few matters I’d like to address.

Before you continue reading, I ask that you drop the hostile opinion you have of me that I am merely a crybaby liberal who is whining because we lost. My resistance transcends party lines — had any other Republican candidate won I would have never taken the time to write about my poignancy — and is rather out of true concern for the future of our country and our world.

The American psyche has become deeply flawed and requires mending. I implore you to open your mind and vastly expand the worldview you currently subscribe to.

I am fully aware that my words do not have much chance at any short-term impact, but I earnestly hope you keep them in mind for the coming times. Take a step back and consider what America as a whole looks like at this moment. We have a giant question mark slowly lurching toward the highest office, with a well-documented homophobe at his heels and a group of billionaires working their way along the web of clandestine conflicts of interests they are spinning daily.

Our next president constantly attempts to de-legitimize our most reliable sources of information and uses Twitter religiously to send out inflammatory messages on such polarized topics as degrading a comedy sketch show to discussing the future of our nuclear arsenal. If the current situation does not disturb you, your ideologies will be questioned and criticized.

The concerns of the Trump voter should not be overlooked but have to be rationally put into perspective. The working-class Trump voter probably lives in a once-booming manufacturing town that is now stricken with low wages or lack of jobs altogether. Well-off Trump voters want the government to keep its hands off their income. And I can assume all Trump voters were concerned about that wall, and the refusal by the left to acknowledge that jihadism really is a facet, albeit a small one, of Islam.

The sympathy from me is short lived when I take off my Trump-voter blinders and again see the entire world for what it is. The braggadocio of PEOTUS when he saves or creates a few thousand jobs brings confidence to the working-class. That confidence is fleeting. Automation in factories is not going to recede over time. The number of human manufacturing jobs that do not require a technical skill will only decline. So someone please explain to me how America will be better off with less money flowing into government programs that benefit us all and more money in the pockets of the wealthiest citizens.

Regardless of what Trump says, coal and oil are not the future. Mining and drilling operations will shut down in the coming decades. A plan to educate or retrain those who will undoubtedly be out of jobs will be necessary in future.

The wall is not making any difference, and he will not deport a much more impressive amount of illegal immigrants than President Obama has. And while I admit the left has a problem with addressing the threat of jihadism, that one issue does not justify Trump’s presidency.

To be blunt, Mr. Sipple, you are attempting to defend the indefensible. I admonish all of us to remain vigilant and be ready to hold our president accountable for all of his actions throughout the next four years. And subscribe to a prominent, national newspaper, too. Please.

Tyler Plaksa,

Freeland

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